45 Years of Memories and How I Organized Them - Quick and Easy and oh, so Wonderfully!

By: Cheri Moseley

After 45 years of pictures, I finally got an album of my OWN LIFE done. I had tons of photos and made one for each of my siblings (3) but never got to my own life. By then, I just wanted to get it done and have it before something went wrong and I never got to do it. So I gathered all my photos, black and whites too and got started! There are photos that go with this article, but to see them you will have to go to my web page - see the link in my signature line!

How Did I Organize 100's Of Photos From 45 Years?
Well, it was actually pretty easy. I chose to organize them according to the HOUSE we lived in. We moved around alot and I remember the house and the schools I went to for the time periods. For instance, I remember going to Sierra Vista Elementary School when I lived in Fullerton and I was in 4th and 5th grade. The year? Didn't remember most of the time. We did alot of camping and long camp trips - the year? Don't remember but I certainly did remember the trip and things that happened. Holidays? Again, no year, but look at all of us in the photoremember about that present or that tree or This one shows my years in first and second grade and my memories on the page in the middle and if you turn the middle journaled page, there are more photos on the 3rd page

How Did I Manage The Memories?
That is one thing that is hard to do - you go through life and think "That was so wonderful, I'll never forget that!". Well, unfortunately, you do forget over time. I looked at the photos and some I could remember and some I couldn't. We are talking 45 years ago here! So instead of trying to make a memory for each photo, and since there were alot of memories I had and some had photos and some didn't, I decided to journal ALL that I could remember about the time period of each set of photos ! By that I mean, I just sat down and brain-stormed about the "house" or "school" time. Not only things that I remember about myself, but also about my siblings, the house, the school, friends, places we went, holidays at the time - anything I could remember for that period of time. Many of these layouts are 4 page spreads with the journaling as the middle page

How I Organized It
After my brain storm of memories (few tears and smiles included there!) I went back and I grouped several memories about similar events or times. I put all the memories about my siblings together, then about my friends. Just organized it into a bit of EVENT sequence. I even did one layout showing each house I lived in and the address and something about each house!! This is time spent with my grand parents and what I remember about those 2 wonderful people and that wonderful house grandpa built with his own hands! It is a 4 page spread with journaling and photos on all pages.

Then I Just Made It Look Nice!
I found a fun font and use a color ink and printed it out on cardstock. Depending on how many memories I had, some pages were 8x10 fully, others were only half a page long. I decorated with stickers and put it in a page protector. The ones that were half a page long, I just cut down the page protector to match the half page.

It might not be this great and wonderful chronologically specific scrapbook, but it does have my memories and that is what really matters. Actually the AGE or YEAR isn't the topic of the memory, it is the EVENT and what happened that you are wanting to remember, not really how old you were or what year it was. I look at this album often. It is nice to just remember.

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